Istari

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[quote]Mostly The Stardock dev team had no involvement in Sins' development. I think I remember at one point Brad did say he offered some AI/code suggestions, but I don't think even he actually worked on the code.[/quote] From what I've seen is Brad worked a great deal on Sins in terms of game design. I don't think he wrote any code but the game would have been very different without B

If you like Galactic Civi

As promised, the new beta of Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has arrived. Beta 4C has some much requested updates including changes to minor races, Hyperion starbases for the Thalan, the map editor, and much more! Check out the change log below!

It was running on Brad's laptop. ThinkPad T60. Nothing particularly powerful.

Gamasutra has an amazing 5 page interview with Stardock's Brad Wardell. In the interview, Brad covers everything from Xbox Live, classic PC games, Master of Magic, new Stardock games, and much more. The interview was done over the phone so it's much more conversational than the typical interview would be.

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is a carriage return. Did it work?

In various posts Brad (Frogboy) has said that there was no way Galactic Civilizations II could make the overall top 10 in PC games sales. The reason for that is that unlike games released by the big 5 publishers, Galactic Civilizations II would only be at major retail outlets (as opposed to every store that carries any sort of PC game). Another factor is that Galactic Civilizations II is available for direct purchase and download which aren't counted.&nbs

Gifted is probably the best "equal" or "fair" battle between human and computer. It gets just a touch of extra stuff in order to compensate with natural round off and other misc. minor errors the AI makes in its calculations.

Strategist - no, what gets people annoyed is when people make a bunch of posts on the same topic.

You can't compare a chess AI algorithm to GalCiv. There are very very limited moves on a very very small board. If a game of GalCiv II were played in a single sector with 2 planets maybe that would work.

It was a congratulations on Cari getting some recognition. When Brad was in Time Magazine people weren't congratulating him on being a software developer but for the recognition.

Er lock it is more like it.

I am going to hide this thread since the title is highly inappropriate.

It's less an activation system as a registration system. It is pretty common in non-game software and leads to better support in the long term. Once a user has registered with the systme, they can redownload the entire game from us in the future. The number of people who will likely have an issue having to type in their serial # on an Internet connection is probably far fewer than the number of people who will lose or damage their CD in the next 5 years and make use of the ability to

It is on our list but it isn't at the top of the priority list. We understand why some people think this is a big deal but please remember that everyone has their favorite feature/pet peeve/whatever. 1.2 is scheduled for this Month. If one looks at the list of improvements we made in 1.1, I think the case can be made that we haven't been exactly sitting around.

Brad (Frogboy) may have designed Galactic Civilizations II and coded the computer AI, but the lead developer, the person who was responsible for the overall programming of Galactic Civilizations is Stardock's Cari Begle. The Houston Chronicle has a story about what may be the only female lead game developer in the PC game industry and how she approaches game development.

The Wargamer has an interview up with Brad Wardell talking about how Stardock has managed to expand into being a PC games retail publisher over the past year. Brad talks about how TotalGaming.net (Stardock's e-distribution network for games) relies on Secure Software Deliver (SSD) rather than Digital Rights Management (DRM) to discourage piracy without causing legitimate customers inconvenience.

Popular strategy discussion site, Apolyton.net is preparing to do an audio interview with Stardock's Brad Wardell with regards to Galactic Civilizations II. They are looking for questions to be answered by Brad. Check out the thread and add your own questions.

CGOnline.com has an exclusive interview with Brad Wardell, designer of Galactic Civilizations II and the game's AI developer.

Gamespot now has the demo version of Galactic Civilizations II! If you're still on the fence, this demo should give you an idea of what the game is like.

Thank you for your words. The team really appreciates them! It makes it all worth the effort.

Nearly every game released has a significant quantity of minor issues of one kind or another. It is impossible on any project of any serious complexity to find every last thing. The types of issues Curtaker's list refers to are mostly cosmetic or usability suggestions. The shipping retail boxed version of the game contains no level 1 bugs. That is, reproduceable bugs that would severely effect the playability of the game. 1.0D, the digital release of the game d

Very nice. There is now a screenshot library available too if you want to put it there as well.

Apolyton has an article in which the designer Brad Wardell recounts the days following the 2003 release of Galactic Civilizations and early ideas on how Galactic Civilizations II would be like. The screenshot seen here is of an early post-Galactic Civilizations co